Job Type
Full-time
Description
About us:
We're Tovala, a food-tech company completely reinventing home cooking to save consumers time. Through an innovative combination of hardware, software, and food, we give our customers a way to enjoy really good, good-for-you meals without sacrificing time to do whatever matters to them. We've amassed a loyal, rapidly growing following in just a few years, radically changing the day-to-day lives of people across the country and successfully creating a new model for the food industry. We're looking for great people to join our team of hard-working, food-loving nerds.
Job Description:
Our Senior Manager of Oven Procurement will play an integral role for Tovala's supply chain team responsible for ensuring we're able to manufacture ovens to high quality standards while controlling costs. This person will manage and scale the team responsible for hardware procurement, and report to our Senior Director of Business Operations.
Note: Position may work remotely majority of time, but will be required to spend time in-person at Chicago and Urbana offices and travel domestically and internationally to suppliers as needed.
How you'll spend your time at Tovala:

• Lead oven procurement & distribution process from end to end - including sourcing, supply chain agreement negotiation, demand planning, freight forwarding & customs importing, US-based 3PLs/warehouse management, and related financial modeling and invoicing.
• Effectively manage a team of analysts and ops/procurement specialists
• Create and refine tools that align demand for materials with production and sales forecasts
• Lead negotiations for supply agreements with hardware manufacturers and sub-suppliers to mitigate volatility in pricing and other market conditions
• Collaborate with QA / engineering team on oven design projects to mitigate manufacturing interruptions due to component availability shortages, ensure suppliers are meeting quality guidelines & spin up additional manufacturing operations in future.
• Implement a vendor onboarding process, execute ongoing approval process reviews to ensure product specifications, negotiate defect reconciliations, terminate and change vendors as needed
• Partner with finance team to ensure components costs are within goal and report and explain variances as needed; lead the annual planning process on these components and re-forecast as needed

Requirements

• 7+ years in sourcing electromechanical or electronics products with at least 3 years managing a team
• Ability to think and act critically about processes and supply chain systems with a focus on continuous improvement and staying ahead of market trends
• Experience with international logistics/importing
• Strong project management, problem solving and planning skills
• Excellent time management skills and strong follow-through and follow-up skills, supported by professional references
• Strong negotiation experience
• Bachelor's degree in Logistics, Supply Chain, Engineering or related field preferred
• Ability to use MSOffice, Google Suite (Drive, Sheets, Docs, etc.) to create useful and transparent procurement and demand planning tools.
• Chinese language skills - Mandarin preferred, Cantonese also helpful - and experience managing Chinese vendors strongly preferred.